January 24 Events

Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year is the first day of a secular, sacred, or other guise whose months are coordinated by the cycles of the moon. The whole year may account to a purely lunar calendar, which is not coordinated to a solar calendar (and, thus, may progress or retrogress through the solar year by comparison to it, depending on whether the lunar calendar has more or fewer than 13 months); or the year may account to a lunisolar calendar, whose months coordinate to the cycles of the moon but whose length is periodically adjusted to keep it relatively in sync with the solar year - typically by adding an intercalary month, when needed.

Chinese New Year, known in modern Chinese as the "Spring Festival", is an important Chinese festival celebrated at the turn of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. Celebrations traditionally run from the evening preceding the first day, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month. The first day of the New Year falls on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February.

The Chinese diaspora has brought Chinese people to settle throughout the world. Even if you aren’t going to be anywhere near the country, you can likely take part in Chinese New Year festivities closer to home.

Many people inaccurately calculate their Chinese birth-year by converting it from their Gregorian birth-year. As the Chinese New Year starts in late January to mid-February, the previous Chinese year dates through 1 January until that day in the new Gregorian year, remaining unchanged from the previous Gregorian year. For example, the 1989 year of the Snake began on 6 February 1989. The year 1990 is generally aligned with the year of the Horse. However, the 1989 year of the Snake officially ended on 8 February 1990. This means that anyone born from 1 January to 7 February 1990 was actually born in the year of the Snake rather than the year of the Horse. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates.